Chinese New Year is just around the corner and lots of Malaysians are gearing up for the days-long festivities. The festive spirit of New Year will pay homage to the idea of renewal, yet sadly some time-honored old practices are bound to persist across Malaysia. Take the use of disposable…
Recently 4,515 hectares of a permanent forest reserve was degazetted in Terengganu, allowing for it to be turned into an oil palm plantation by a government-linked company, TDM Berhad. That means that on an area the size of more than 4,500 football fields where now trees stand will soon be lost,…
An endangered Malayan tapir was killed in a road accident, then it was presently skinned and dismembered by several men who decided to retrieve its body parts. Around the same time, over the Christmas holidays, an endangered Malayan sun bear, too, was run down and killed in a road accident….
Two sun bears and a Malayan tapir. Three endangered animals perished on Malaysian roads in as many days over the Christmas holidays. Time for a sigh of “not again!” Indeed. On December 22 a tapir was run down and killed on the Jalan Seremban-Kuala Pilah road. A group of men…
The juvenile zebra shark was recently on sale at a market stall in Miri, Sarawak. When Iqbal Abdollah, chairman of the local branch of the Malaysian Nature Society, saw it, he instantly knew there was a problem. This species is listed as “endangered” on the IUCN’s Red List. Therefore, it should…
The East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) will connect Port Klang on the east coast with Kuantan Port on the west coast before winding its way north along the coast all the way to Kota Baru in the north. The RM55 billion project will be a boon to travelers and commuters…
The Ulu Muda forest reserve is a 160,000-hectare hotspot of biodiversity in Kedah and one of the largest swathes of lowland dipterocarp forest in Peninsular Malaysia. Its wildlife boasts well over a hundred species of mammals, including Asian elephants, Malayan tigers, Malayan tapirs, Malayan sun bears, gaur and flying squirrels….
Wildlife rangers in Malaysia are regularly understaffed and underfunded. At times they are also outgunned. This, though, may be just about to change. “Hunters go to the forest carrying guns, but our people carry parang (a machete-style knife),” Natural Resources and Environment Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar explained in a…
When people think of the Malaysian wilderness, they likely imagine dense jungles, picturesque islands, beautiful white sand beaches and colorful coral reefs. These are defining characteristics of the natural environment in Malaysia and should be celebrated and protected, but so should another vitally important and somewhat lesser-known landscape – wetlands….
One might think first of jungles, oceans and islands when picturing Malaysia’s varied wilderness, but one of the most critical and widespread habitats in the country are actually its wetlands. Unique amongst other landscapes, wetlands act as filtration systems and provide stability for many different ecosystems – but just like…